Tuesday, December 28, 2010

I have not posted here for a month and a half which is a new low for me. I could say it's because I have been busy. As a matter of fact, I have been quite busy: I moved house, I started a campaign to ban purple boat shoes from the streets of Potts Point, I spent a lot of time thinking about dimmable lights, and I have also started writing my memoirs*. But to be honest all that has been make-work to avoid the fact that I saw something which left me deeply traumatised and unable to concentrate on simple, everyday tasks. As part of my therapy I will relate the vision here:

A family stepped onto the footpath from a hotel foyer. The young girl (aged about 10) was wearing a sexy Mrs Santa negligee - red dress with fluffy white ruffles at the hem. She had a headband from which two giant candy canes protruded like antlers or - if you prefer hen's night type imagery - like red and white striped droopy penises. Her mother was wearing exactly the same dress in exactly the same size. And just to clarify, the mother was NOT the same size as her young daughter. Nowhere near. There was back cleavage.

At first I thought the two young boys (maybe 8 or so. Definitely old enough to have some agency in the way of sartorial choice) were just in mildly humiliating red and green combination clothes but it soon became apparent that they were dressed as elves with jaunty zig zag hems on their tops. I can't quite remember whether or not there were bells involved. I can see you thinking that the Mrs Santa disaster sounds a lot worse than the elf thing, and that is what I though too, until one of the boys moved so that I could see, written in large letters on his bottom "Santa's Little Helper". I have thought long and hard about phrases stamped on a small child's rear end, and concluded that there is only one phrase that could possibly surpass this one in hideous wrongness: "Santa's Little Helping". Actually, I only thought about it for a minute or so. I'm sure that the next time there is a blackout or a long car trip where the cd player is broken an excellent way to pass the time would be to think up phrases to have printed on the pants of your young children in order to scar them for life. Please keep me up to date with your suggestions!

*I haven't really got past the title yet, but it is going to be called "A ......" I'm still fleshing out the final details.

Monday, November 15, 2010

So we moved into the amazing apartment and I learnt something useful: NLJ has an apartment identical to ours except that you can see the Harbour Bridge and Opera House through his toilet window. Going on what we are respectively paying for our apartments I have reached the conclusion that being able to see Sydney Harbour is not -as the real estate agents would have you believe- a million dollar view. It is worth precisely $10 a week.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Tallboy and I are moving house. There are several contributing factors that led to this decision but the main one was that the landlord has ended our lease. So we went house-hunting last week and found a total gem of an apartment that we applied for on the spot. I even got my driver's license out (but covered up the photo so we didn't scare our prospective landlady to death). During the agonising 2 day waiting period to find out whether or not our application was successful I wrote the landlady several emails. Luckily, I didn't send any of them:

Dear Di,Just wanted to let you know how great it was to see the apartment and to meet you. You are awesome! Tallboy and I are very responsible people, to the point of being sad, boring old farts. For example, we quite like to drink tonic water without the gin. We also like to go on walking tours, and to discuss formatting, fonts and punctuation late into the night (sometimes even until 10pm!!!). As I said, it was really great to meet you, Felix

Dear Di,Just thought I'd drop you a line to let you know that I have been thinking about the apartment and any improvements that could be made on it. And... there aren't any!! It's perfect!!!!Good luck choosing an awesome tenant for it and let me know if I can help in ANY way at all! Thanks, Felix

Dear Di,It was sooo great to meet you when we went to see your apartment that I can't stop thinking about it. Tallboy and I have been discussing it and we have concluded that our love for your apartment is greater by far than our love for each other. So it would be a little bit like destiny and a lot like awesome perfection if we moved into it so we could complete the circle of love. I hope this doesn't sound crazy or anything but I honestly believe that if buildings can have feelings then yours has feelings for me and Tallboy. Strong feelings. Romantic feelings. Please Rent Me feelings (don't take that the wrong way). Have a great day, Felix

Hey Di, You know something? I think one syllable names are so cool. And yours in particular really suits you. You seem like the coolest person I have ever met, and I have met quite a few, even though I am so boring and responsible. Anyway, it was great to meet you. I loved how you opened the door for us; it was a lovely touch. Look forward to hearing from you soon - but don't rush or anything - I know being fabulous takes up lots of time so whenever you're ready. Thanks again for your time, Felix xoxo

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

I went back to the RTA for a third time today and finally managed to get my driver's license. And you would think I'd be pleased but in fact I am PISSED OFF because I look like a fucking AXE MURDERER in the picture! I know that everybody is supposed to look bad in ID photos but there is bad and there is Baaad. There is looking a bit off colour or tired, and there is looking malicious and arrestable. The only benefit is that I can whip it out like capsicum spray to scare off people who try to attack me.

Along with my evil, piercingly santanic stare, my head ended up looking rather boxy in a root vegetable, news reader sort of a way so I look like a fugly , boxy, axe murderer. I thought all the hours I have spent watching the Top Model franchise shows online would have helped me to develop a great technique for staring at a camera and waiting for it to take a picture of me, but apparently not.

Of course, it has occurred to me that the problem, rather than being with a badly taken photo, lies with the fact that I look like an evil Rob Kelvin* dressed up as a sweet potato but I think if that was the case then surely somebody would have mentioned it to me by now... right?

*If you are not familiar with Rob, one of Adelaide's most boringly staid news-readers, then just imagine what David Hasselhoff would look like if he were an upstanding member of the local Uniting Church, never drank alcohol, bred pigeons, and had a name like "Rob" or "Reg" and you're pretty much there. Now imagine this person looking like a sweet potato with a scarf around their neck and you know exactly what I look like in my license picture.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

I really, really like sitting around on ugly plastic chairs in waiting areas where an automated voice calls out numbers on tickets and tells you which counter to visit. I like it so much that I decided to go back to the motor registry place on my day off last week just so I could be told there was nothing they could do and I should try again next week, which is what they told me the week before. It was awesome.

The cherry on top to my wonderful banana split with extra choclate and nuts of an excursion was at the expence of the woman next to me (ticket number T45, counter 4). The woman behind the counter asked her what her previous address was and she said "22 Queen St Woo-Wah-Wah". The poor, poor dear - of all the suburbs to live in when you have a quite significant speech impediment. I only hope for her sake that she didn't leave Woolhara only to move to Wooloomooloo or Warriwee.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

I have spent the past week stuck in bed feeling like shit and most of it has been a complete waste of time. A very large proportion of my time has been taken up with blowing my nose, and while this was extremely useful in the short term, in the long-run, it is an action that will not be remembered. It will not change the world, or be useful to others, or help me to make a name for myself in perpetuity.

However, in between nose blows I had a lot of thinking time. And I mean a LOT. It began to bother me that there is no emoticon for the phrase "Christ on a bike!". I have been using this phrase quite a bit recently so it seemed a great pity. I spent hours obsessing over the stupidity of it all and then put my bedridden status to good use and I invented one myself. Christ on a bike! So here it is: +!8

Now that I have invented something I can die in peace. Or maybe I'll wait a bit longer; I still have a custard tart in the fridge that ought to be eaten.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Tallboy and I saw Inception the other day and it wasn't bad but I got to thinking afterwards that my biggest problem with it is that it wasn't dreamlike enough. Unless, that is, we are talking about the dreams that special effects artists have. I don't know about you but I don't tend to dream about things that look visually amazing in an expensive, technological sort of way. For example, I had a dream a couple of nights ago where I was a journalist tracking down some underworld heavies. I'm pretty sure I was a man too, but it's hard to be objective; it was just a feeling; not like my friend NC who regularly dreams of people walking around naked with one or two extra penises for added impact.

...anyway, I got chased into my house and while trying to stop my pursuer from breaking down the door, I started yelling at Stephen Page (who in the dream was my son but in real life is the Artistic Director of Bangarra Dance Theatre) to call 000. "Stephen. STEPHEN!!! Call the police!!! Stephan, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? For Christ's sake call the fucking emergency services! Don't just sit there!!!" My recalcitrant child stared moodily at me but didn't move so I raced over to do it myself. I punched the bowl of raw meat strips in front of him three times with my finger. Lucky it was a push button phone or things would've become messy.

Monday, July 26, 2010

The sweet looking grandma, dripping in gold and pearls did not exactly measure up to type. She seemed placid enough at first, but my hero worship kicked in when she began a conversation about politics and managed to end it by yelling at the top of her voice "there are only two things, in my opinion, that men are interested in: SEX and WINNING".

Apologies to the mild mannered old man who happened to be in the shop at the time, quietly minding his own business. I presume the reason you left so quickly was because you realised it was a while since you had had sex or won anything.

Apologies also to anyone who has found this blog by googling "sex and winning". It probably isn't quite what you were looking for.

Chapter Two: The Customer As Dullard

The slightly frazzled looking middle aged woman practically flung herself at the counter. "There's a new book out... [pause to give me time to give her the answer, in case this was all the information she would need to provide me with]. It's called something like... Crime."

I looked at the reddish lacy corset she had on over her skivvy and under her jacket, which was bravely teamed with an akubra. I took a deep breath and allowed my brain to shrink to about the size that her's likely was. My eyes (probably) glazed over a bit and I pronounced - oracle like - "is it Truth by Peter Temple?"

"Yes! Yes that's it!!" Now. There's another book... [again, the pause]. It was recently made in to a movie [another pause]... it's got an animal in the title".

"Ummmm.... is it fiction or non-fiction?" I asked, mostly to play for time.

"Fiction, it's fiction It's definitely fiction. It's got an animal in the title.... a tortoise. It's something about a tortoise".

"Ohhh. Um well I'm not sure that I... (at this point I remembered to forget my brain again) ... Hedgehog! It's The Elegance Of The Hedgehog".

(Modesty prevents me from accurately recording all the fabulous things she said about at this point but please, let you imaginations run wild).

Sunday, July 11, 2010

I have not read the following books:1. Shantaram (life is too short to be reading 933 pages of quasi-biographical fiction-esque pap*)2. the Stieg Larsson triology3. Harry Potter (there are movies after all)4. The Secret (the real secret is that she only wrote the book to make money, not to help you)5. The Alchemist (A "fable about following your dreams". I am allergic to fables; they give me a temperature and an unsightly rash)

I have no desire whatsoever to read these books. If you reccommend any of the above for my reading pleasure I will lose the small amount of respect I had for you to begin with. I may even fart in your general direction.

At a rough guess, I would estimate about 100 people have bought a Stieg Larsson book from me while saying breathlessly "you HAVE to read them!!!". If any of you are reading this I say to you "No I don't. Piss off and let me stare aimlessly at the wall in peace while thinking about recipes that include potato and cheese".

*yes, I am writing this at work and yes, I got up and walked over to the shelf to check how many pages are in that book.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

When it comes to life, I have some firm rules. I think if everyone followed them then I wouldn't be able to feel so superior which would be a pity because I quite like that about myself (second on the list of Best Things About Me, just after "How I Made Gumbo Twice This Year Already And It Was Awesome Both Times" and just before "My Immense And Selfless Modesty"). However, I will share my top five rules for the edification of those discerning enough to read this blog:

1. Never, ever drink instant coffee because it tastes like glue mixed with dirt and a bit of gravox.

2. If you don't understand the title of the job in the ad then you shouldn't apply for it.

3. Don't trust a man if you can't see his eyebrows.

4. Refuse all offers of friendship from the following: people who don't have earlobes, people who ignore punctuation, people with weird facial hair, people who have to buy two pairs of different sized shoes because they have one foot much larger than the other, people who bustle about, people under the age of 65 who use the phrase "of an evening", people who constantly talk about other people's "bits", people who wear brown shoes with black pants, people who wear socks and sandals, people who don't believe in evolution, people who are allergic to 6 or more things, close talkers, vegans, climate change sceptics, homophobes, racists, Basques, Spaniards, Inuits, Maltese and people from the Natal region of South Africa.

Monday, June 14, 2010

I now work in a very different village from the one where I worked with The Only Gay in The Village but we have a resident Only. He is a chef or - in his words - "a CHEFFFF!!"

He is a regular (or should that be irregular ?) customer. He only ever buys cooking books, and never loses an opportunity to drop into the conversation something about his profession and how subsequently superior that makes him. A typical response to a relatively inane comment from me about cooking something from the book he has just bought goes a bit like this: "I'm a CHEFFF. It's what I DO. See? I COOK for a LIVING."

I happen to know that he is only a CHEFFF in the local PUB which is not really all that GLAM. I know he thinks I am SCHTUPID because I am not a CHEFF. Poor little dear.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

My idea for a series of children's books based on Shakespearean characters has been rejected by all the publishers I sent it to. I was going to start off with one about Lady Macbeth and I wanted to call it Out Damn Spot.

Friday, June 4, 2010

The world now has one too many memoirs of the Middle East Experience written by a Western journalist or aid worker... which is a pity because whether or not they are worthy, well written, important documents or a combination of all 3, nobody actually wants to read them. Trust me, in 3-6 months from now I will be one of the poor suckers pulling the stickers off and sending them back to the publishers to be pulped.

Monday, May 24, 2010

I have had a really great idea for a contraption that I think you could use in your Broadway Shopping Centre. I think it would be an ace alternative to your leaf blower that your staff like to use on the outside ramp at one a.m. on Monday mornings. I live quite near that ramp so I have been able to closely observe the flaws with your leaf blower. First of all, it is very loud and it wakes up the neighbours (ie me). The essential problem is that a leaf blower is nothing more than a reverse vacuum cleaner. Vacuum cleaners are quite good machines so if you take the basic principle and make it go backwards then ... you're totally fucking it up. Anyway, here is a picture of a prototype that I have developed that I think you should consider using:

Give me the nod and I will swing it into production and you can have a 10% discount.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Tallboy and I recently went to the mountains for a mini holiday. Being poor, and having great senses of humour, we decided to stay in a place that looked exactly like Fawlty Towers. It turned out to be exactly like Fawlty Towers if it had been run by one of the characters from Are You Being Served?

The bed was like an obstacle course for some kind of obscure European sport - a cross between curling and rock climbing. There was a 35 degree gradient towards the middle of the bed. I kept waking up at odd hours from dreams that were based on Indiana Jones type movies where I was hanging by the fingers from the edge of a pit full of boiling lava. Then a car horn went off across the street and kept going until the battery ran out. There were more crazy things about the place but I am too tired to bother writing any more.

Monday, May 3, 2010

1. I woke from my dream this morning and retained the most brilliant idea that my subconscious has ever created: I need to buy a special new cake of soap that smells different from the current one. It might not sound like much but I am convinced that it will complete my life in ways I never knew were flawed.

2. I realised Marieke Hardy has become a fan of my blog! In this month's Frankie she spent several lines discussing "Two Thousand and Zen". That's totally my line and not at all derivative of my friend Hells Bells' adoption of "Two Thousand Mine" a little over 12 months ago.

3. I am now totally across all current fashion trends. I have just watched several back to back episodes of America's Next Top Model. The two "chaahck-let girls" are competition for each other. They go to New Zealand where people think they are " rilly sixy". I also learnt that "while sheep might be difficult to tell apart, it doesn't work for a top model". This show should be on every high school syllabus. It's not just entertaining, it's educational. And that's extremely important if you want to be intellect.

4. I now only talk to cats on facebook, not people. It solves everything.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

1. I woke from my dream just before I was about to eat a white chocolate cream and pear eclair. Or maybe it was a white chocolate, cream, and pear eclair. I don't know because I never got to taste it and there was no punctuation in my dream. Can somebody please hurry up and invent this so that I can eat it because it looked AMAZING!

2. I remembered that I am not Marieke Hardy. She's bloody perfect: cute, sexy, funny, clever, writes for frankie magazine and sits around on TV talking about books.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

I know that you can't read this because a) you're a cockroach and b) you're dead but I though a short note would be a convenient medium for me to tell my readers that I killed you by dropping a bag of money on you. This amused me greatly and I feel it could serve as some kind of metaphor in a piece of highbrow, postmodern fiction. If I ever get around to writing such a work you can be assured that you will live in posterity among the great bugs of literature, like the one in Kafka's Metamorphosis.

Love, Felix

Dear Bertoni Baristas,

I've got you sussed: I have managed to decode the little squiggles you write on the coffee cups so I know they say the colour of whatever the person ordering is wearing. This makes it look like you remember them as indiviuals when their coffee is ready when actually you are just looking at their tops. As well as this, it means you can look at all the ladies' boobs.

I still haven't figured out how you manage to convince so many people that sitting on upturned milk crates is a cool and comfortable alternative to actual chairs. But you've managed it somehow so snaps to you.

Love, Felix

P.S. when you say "ciao" and "bella" it doesn't make me believe you are Italian. Nice try though.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

I spent my entire 13 years of schooling in the Catholic Education System. It occurred to me the other day that the pinnacle of my primary and secondary education combined was the time a heavily pregnant ex-nun put condoms on the bottom of chair legs in our year 10 Science class.

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Bland is IN. Wear as much pale grey and beige as you can get your hands on.

The Low Maintenance Girlfriend is OUT, the High Maintenance Girlfriend is IN. This means men must adopt hangdog expressions and learn to quietly sympathise with one another, and women must forget anything they ever knew about football, and get manicures.

Wigs are IN, Real hair is OUT.

Dickens is IN, Dostoevsky is OUT.

Trees and Greg Combet are IN, Bonsai and Peter Garrett are OUT (they don't do enough for the environment).

Tilsit is the new Manchego, Ritalin is the new Codral, and Desalination Plants are the new Warner Brothers' Movie Worlds.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

I am a brilliant over-achiever. It is not even March and I have already fulfilled my New Year's Resolutiuon for Two Thousand Zen. Unlike last year where I set myself a list of endless herculian tasks (like bumping into less things), this year I took the KISK approach: Keep It Simple Kids. It totally paid off! My resolution was to make gumbo which I have wanted to do for years, mostly because it is called gumbo. And I made gumbo on Friday night. It was edible and everything!

I have a friend called Justin Timberlake* and he is bringing sexy back. Sexy went to visit the penguins at the zoo but got lost, and didn't have any money for a bus ticket home again. Justin Timberlake's generosity doesn't stop there though - he also has a brilliant idea to bring together lonesome (but quite hot) single people and has asked me to advertise his plan on this blog. Bless you, Justin Timberlake**,for the vote of confidence but this blog only has a readership of about 6 people*** so it probably won't do much good.

Nevertheless, I promised so here we go: Flash Mob Single's Night. Woo hoo! It's so brilliant I don't know why it hasn't been done yet. The idea is simpler than my attempt to make it somehow make sense under the blog title Keep It Simple Kids (not hard). Let me explain: you collect a database of (hot) single people, you inform them via some form of new-fangled media of the time and location of the flash mob, and they all turn up and mill around the previously specified location. Pretty much everyone there will be Single and Looking. And quite hot. There is so much scope for metaphorical fireworks that Justin Timberlake might even organise actual fireworks. If not, I am sure he will at least make sure there is a bar that stocks good quality gin.

So if you are a hot single person and you are interested then please let me know and I will pass your details on to Justin Timberlake. If you don't totally fit this description but are still interested then please still get in touch. Well, I mean if you are not single but you have a loser boyfriend you want to ditch then you still qualify, but you really do have to be hot. It's not that ugly people don't hook up with one another, but it's just that Justin Timberlake has a very high sense of visual aesthetic and is easily upset by things like people who don't have symmetrical faces or people with moles that have hair growing out of them.

In conclusion: If you want to feel ahead of the game then keep New Year's Resolutions short, sweet and pretty damn easy. If you want to be in the game then get yourself to a flash mob singles event near you and finally, whatever you do, don't bother trying to make a line of little stars on your blog look symmetrical and even because it is a bloody waste of time and your time is more valuable than that. You should be spending your time watching Project Runway and drinking the wine that Tallboy left behind at your flat on the weekend because it really is quite nice and it will go off before Thursday when you and Tallboy are having dinner together next.

* Not his real name

**Not your real name

***Naturally, this is an underestimate for the purposes of comedic value, but not by very much

Sunday, February 7, 2010

1. Marrickville and Balmain are INNER CITY! I know they are close to the city but I never realised that they were considered inner... I mean, ok, I will concede that to get from Balmain to the city you only need to go one bus stop but the bus goes on a big, concrete freeway type thing, there is open space, and you must cross water*.

2. Tall Boy likes to put things on his head.

3. Two year old boys can never have too many diggers. Toy diggers, imaginary diggers, drawings of diggers that their relatives have been press-ganged into drawing all elicit the same response, namely, "DIGGER!! MORE Digger!!!"

4. When soaked heavily in soy sauce, sugar, sesame seeds and about twenty other masking ingredients tofu is delicious!

5. Julian Clary is gay. Who knew?

* I am aware that this sounds a bit like a fortune teller's prediction. I don't care. In fact, I kind of like it that way.

Sunday, January 31, 2010

On Sundays, it is my job to produce a bestseller list from the previous week's sales at work. I thought I could employ some timesaving nous and I have come up with a long-term bestseller list that will serve for many weeks without having to be changed. This will give me more time to stare at the walls and think about shoe grip, chocolate body paint, Britney Spears' devolution into craziness, and other similarly important things. I had the help of a fellow staff member*, who suggested the categories to replace the more usual Fiction/Non-Fiction binary. Here it is, the Almost Perpetual Bestseller List:

METAPHORICAL1. The Art of Hornet's Nests - Dalai Larsson2. The Girl With The Happiness Tattoo - Dalai Larsson3. 1001 Coming of Age Stories to Read Before You Die - Various4. The Girl With The "Free Tibet" Tattoo - Dalai Larsson5. Mastering The Art of French Cussing - Naughty Child

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Most Triumphant Moment of Traditional Gender Role Subversion I Witnessed:My Cousin's two year old son throwing a tantrum, and subsequently being allowed to wear his younger sister's new pretty pink dress for about two hours on Christmas morning.

Best Text Message I Recieved:Got the anchovies. Quit My job.

Best Actress in a Leading Role: Me. (who's surpirised??)I could give myself this award many times over but I think my best performance was in continually finding different ways to avoid telling people who bought Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall that I got halfway through and gave up because I thought it was crap and boring... cut off my legs and call me Shorty if I didn't just sell a copy of that book in the middle of sneakily typing this at work!

Saturday, January 9, 2010

I was looking forward to my trip to the desalination plant with Tallboy and his family because I agreed to go on the condition that I enjoy free reign to write up the experience in my blog.

Once at the plant, we all got to wear hardhats and flurescent vests and stamp about gravelly ground in steel capped boots while looking at pipes and holes in the ground but I can't make that sound especially humourous. Essentially, desalination plants are not very funny. At all. The best I can come up with is to accidently on purpose leave out the "L" from time to to time and spent the rest of the post discussing desalination pants.

Desalination pants use a process of "reverse osmosis". After the desalination pant we went to a winery for unch. It was very peasant.